A business Approach to Social Entrepreneurship

A new form of entrepreneurship is taking shape around the world and is revolutionizing the way we do things. The role of the business community in providing the technical and non-technical needs of the society has been a challenge for a long time. This paper explores the various critical issues involved in the current development of a successful social enterprise. Based on existing theoretical and empirical studies in the area of product development including innovation theories, entrepreneurial identification and development, this work presents a business approach towards a successful development of a social entrepreneurial project. The paper draws insight from the works of Brinckerhoff; and Wheelwright and Clark´s approach to pruduct development process, Nigel Slack´s importance-performance matrix as well as Von Hippel´s lead user theory. It also utilizes interviews and questionnaires from leading Social Entrepreneurs, Social Venture Capitalists/Philanthropists to identify current development process of Social Entrepreneurship and propose a new development process that best fits current Social Entrepreneurship need.